“It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.”
More from Marcel Proust on Philosophy
“The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.”
“We consider it innocent to desire, and heinous that the other person should do so.”
“... the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves...”
“We forgive the crimes of individuals, but not their participation in a collective crime.”
“We do not include the pleasures we enjoy in sleep in the inventory of the pleasures we have experienced in the course of our existence.”
“We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire but gradually our desire changes.”
“All our final resolutions are made in a state of mind which is not going to last.”
“It is always thus impaled by a state of mind which is destined not to last that we make our irrevocable decisions.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfaction...”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Isaac Asimov
13 quotes“Society is much more easily soothed than one's own conscience.”